


Funeral Arrangements

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After that horrible night in Godric's Hollow, Lily and James' friends pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funeral Arrangements

When the news came that it was Harry, not Neville, and that she could leave her house for the first time in over a year, Alice Longbottom buried herself in funeral arrangements for the Potters. White lilies, of course. The family plot in Godric's Hollow. And hadn't Lily been Anglican? Alice could not remember, so she chose readings she thought would work either way.

Remus wanted to help, of course, and she let him. He was like her; he needed to be occupied. You could not tell him to sit quietly and let someone else take care of things. So they sat at her kitchen table in the grey November light, shuffling financial and legal records, owling friends and relatives, and she propped Neville on his lap.

That evening, she heard Frank weeping in the shower. Alice bit her hand in self-recrimination; she had accused Frank of flirting with Lily on more than one occasion, and they had rowed about it, and even if Alice had been right, she knew damn well that nothing had ever come of it. And now nothing ever would.

The next day, Alice and Remus went to confirm the identities of the bodies. Lily and James looked eerily alive, perfectly preserved. _Avada Kedavra_ left no traces, no marks, and Alice knew that, but she was disconcerted just the same. Lily had apparently stopped cutting her hair when they went into hiding, because it was long now, and wavy and brilliant red, like a mermaid's. James' hair still stuck up at the back. They could both have been sleeping.

Outside, before they _Apparated_ , Alice smoked her first cigarette in six years. She transfigured it from a fallen leaf.

"Want one?" she asked.

"I don't smoke," said Remus.

"Neither do I," she said.

He sighed and accepted a drag off of hers. Grey smoke into greyer surroundings – trees going bald with each gust of autumn wind, some of them just black twigs against stormy skies. The sun felt so futile and far away behind those sentinel clouds.

"Sorry, haven't done that spell in a really long time. Tastes like shit," she said.

He did not reply.

She had never known Remus not to reply.

But what could he say? 'Gee, Alice, this disgusting cigarette REALLY helps with the loss of all of my childhood friends in one day, THANKS A MILLION.'

There would be no trial for Sirius. Remus would not be called as a witness. So at least there was that small mercy for him. He would not have to sit in a Ministry courtroom and help some hungry junior prosecutor assemble the evidence of his best friend's treachery. To have every happy memory of schoolboy delight examined and polluted before a jury.

They didn't finish the terrible cigarette. She transfigured it back into half a leaf. She hadn't used to do that, as a teenage girl smoking under the eaves of the house against her mother's wishes, but Alice was a mother now herself, and she was thus in the habit of picking up her own messes.

They _Disapparated_ separately – she to her home, and he to the flat that he would lose at the end of the month, because James was no longer paying the rent. James had forgotten to include provision for Remus in his will – thinking, no doubt, that he would outlive the werewolf, whose health was perpetually poor.

Alice did not see Remus again until the funeral.

During the service, light rain fell. The three dozen mourners conjured umbrellas in rapt silence. Beads of rain snaked down Alice's black coat. Frank had mastered his grief and now wore a mask-like face that betrayed nothing. Neville got upset about the water and Alice had to take him aside for ten minutes to calm him down, pacing back and forth under an oak tree, speaking softly to him, both reassuring and pleading. _Please, my love, let me say goodbye to my friends. Please, please give me this moment._

By the time she returned, the service had ended, and the coffins were laid in the ground.

"You're welcome at our place, you know," said Frank to Remus as the mourners dispersed.

"That's very kind of you," said Remus, scraping back his rain-wet hair, which had begun to turn prematurely grey. "But I'm going abroad for a while."

"Come for supper, at least," said Alice, adjusting the baby on her hip.

Remus shook his head and managed a small smile that did not reach his eyes. "I'll write to you both," he said. "Keep me abreast of Neville's news. He's a great wizard in the making."

Before Alice could form words of protest, Remus had reached the perimeter of the churchyard and _Disapparated_.

That was what did it. That was what unleashed the waterworks in earnest. Alice wept hard, and she didn't stop for an hour. Frank stood with her under the oak tree while she babbled and apologized and screamed. The other mourners laid flowers on the fresh graves, covered over by magic, and departed. Frank took off his black scarf and curled it around her neck. She pressed her face into his chest, taking ragged breaths scented with his aftershave. He took Neville with one arm and stroked her hair with his other hand.

Alice heard a soft pop and unstuck herself from Frank's robes. Her Auror's senses, somewhat out of practice, woke like sleeping dragons. She found the source seconds later – a figure in long black robes approaching the fresh grave. At this distance, she could not see his face clearly. But this didn't seem like a mourner returning for something they had forgotten. This seemed like someone visiting in secret.

The skinny, black-robed figure dropped to his knees. Alice grabbed Frank's hand and steered him back to the grave. If this was a Death Eater come to defile these graves, or to look for clues about his master's whereabouts, he had another fucking thing coming, because he had just crossed the path of two highly-trained Aurors who were full of grief and anguish and new-parent hormones to boot.

The wizard heard her approach, jumped to his feet, and _Disapparated_.

"Did you see who it was?" asked Alice, panting slightly.

Frank shook his head.

"Damn," she said.

She looked down.

Their mysterious quarry had laid a red lily atop the grave. On Lily's side, deliberately. Not James'. It stood out like a spatter of blood on a clean handkerchief, the only spot of color in the landscape of grey and white.

The effect was strangely beautiful.


End file.
